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Rishi Sunak was last night accused of desperately rewriting history by claiming it had been a mistake to ’empower’ scientists who ‘screwed’ Britain during Covid — despite originally backing ‘bold’ measures.
The ex-Chancellor last night sensationally claimed it was an error to bow so heavily to SAGE, the Government’s influential scientific committee, whose doom-laden forecasts swayed Boris Johnson into a series of damaging restrictions.
In the same blistering interview with the Spectator magazine, the Tory leadership hopeful argued No10 failed to acknowledge economic trade-offs ‘from the beginning’.
Rishi Sunak was last night accused of desperately rewriting history by claiming it had been a mistake to ’empower’ scientists who ‘screwed’ Britain during Covid — despite originally backing ‘bold’ measures
Despite helping to thwart the pandemic in the early days, the Government’s two-year cycle of curbs crippled the economy and saw NHS backlogs soar. Ministers eventually lost faith in draconian policies, instead to resorting to relying on vaccines and immunity to keep Covid at bay.
Mr Sunak, who describes himself as an ‘underdog’ in the race to become the next Prime Minister, complained he ‘wasn’t allowed to talk about the trade-off’ between the virus-controlling effects of lockdowns and the impact on the health service, economy and education — in a piece that heavily suggested he was opposed to lockdowns.
But SAGE scientists today accused him of passing the buck, arguing that ministers are the ones who make decisions and it is ‘not the fault’ of experts that ministers failed to source wider advice.
Other experts pointed out that SAGE’s viewpoints were dismissed because they were trying to urge the Government to act sooner.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist and one of the most outspoken members of SAGE, told MailOnline: ‘It’s an old adage that advisors advise and ministers decide. This is how it should be, how it has always been and how it was during the pandemic.’
And critics today accused him of political game-playing, questioning why he didn’t publicly speak out at the time if he was so against the measures. Social media commentators called his silence ‘weak’ and ‘pathetic’.
Lee Cain, Mr Johnson’s former head of communications, today dismissed Mr Sunak’s account of events as ‘simply wrong’, while the PM’s former adviser Dominic Cummings called his comments ‘dangerous rubbish’.
Mr Sunak already appeared to be back-tracking by midday, saying he was not arguing that the first lockdowns were a mistake — despite heavily suggesting last night that it would not have gone ahead without SAGE’s gloomy exaggerated modelling.
The PM candidate supported Britain’s tough stance when the virus first hit, even taking to a Downing Street podium in an April 2020 briefing to urge people to stay at home to protect the health service and save lives. Weeks earlier, he said it was ‘a time to be bold, a time for courage’.
Economic measures brought in to contain the pandemic, when Mr Sunak was Chancellor, cost up to £400billion but huge amounts were wasted on unusable PPE, while the furlough scheme was abused.
At the same time, the virus-controlling policies had a devastating effect on healthcare and are largely blamed for fueling diagnosis and treatment delays, especially among cancer patients, with thousands expected to die early.
But Mr Sunak boasted last month that he personally blocked another lockdown during the winter Omicron wave.